As business goals and team structures evolve, so too must your sites and the content that lives within them. Ideas must flourish and grow, not become rigid or stale. SharePoint hub sites bring flexible, dynamic building blocks to your company intranet – connecting collaboration and communication. Associating sites together in a hub site enhances discovery and engagement with content, while creating a complete and consistent representation of your project, department or region.

Microsoft first disclosed SharePoint hub sites during Ignite 2017. And today, we are pleased to announce that they are now rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365. We are encouraged by early adopter feedback and can’t wait for every customer to use and adopt them.

SharePoint hub sites bring the following new capabilities to you and your intranet:

The Contoso Travel HR communication shown here as a part of the HR hub site, Web view on the left, within the SharePoint mobile app on the right.

Hub sites support good governance, giving admins a growth framework to maintain relationships between sites over time. They are easy for admins to establish and bring efficiencies for people who work inside and across the sites on a day-to-day basis. And when managing change within the business, it is easy to move a site from one hub site to another.

Getting started with SharePoint hub sites in Office 365

You can convert an existing communication site or modern team time into a hub site, or you can start with a brand-new modern site. We recommend selecting a communication site as the hub site. You can associate multiple team sites and communication sites to model and promote an intranet that reflects the way your people organize. It is easy for admins to create one or more hub sites. After a hub site is created, approved site owners can associate existing team sites and communication sites with the hub site.

Admins, you are the enablers. And the SharePoint Online Management Shell (aka, PowerShell for SharePoint in Office 365) is your enabling tool of choice.

The PowerShell cmdlet you’ll want to get most familiar with is: Register-SPOHubSite https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/HR (where HR URL is the full-path address of the existing site that you want to convert into a hub site). You then will assign a unique security group to designate approved site owners that can associate sites to this new hub. You simply create a mail-enabled security group and add the users. You then run an additional PowerShell command to give that group permissions to associate their sites to the hub site.

Note: You must be a SharePoint administrator or above in Office 365 to create SharePoint hub sites. Site owners, however, can associate a SharePoint site with a hub site that already exists.

Once a hub site is established, it’s then a two-click process to associate to the hub site.

As the site owner, go to the site you want to have associated to the hub site. Click Settings (gear icon) > Site information > hub site association and select the desired hub. You’ll only see the hubs you have permission to associate to. And then click Save. You will see the hub navigation appear above. The site itself will inherit the hub theme, and news and activities will begin to flow up to the hub site home page – along with a search crawl of content for any site associated to the hub site. And at any time, per a reorg or change in business direction, you can easily move sites between hub sites. This is the power of a dynamic intranet, one that can change and adapt with the ebb and flow of your ever-changing business landscape. Note: individual sites can only be associated to one hub site at a time.

Site owners can associate an existing team site or communication site with a hub site.

Note: Sites associated with a SharePoint hub site don't inherit the permissions of the hub site or any other sites associated with it. Each site, including the hub site, will retain their current permission settings. And as easy as it is to associate a site to a hub site, you, too, can dissaciate from one.

Once the hub site has been established, you’ll then want to further set it up and refine it for that organization -- so the hub site carries the right name and logo, the preferred navigation elements, a preferred theme, and the desired layout for news, sites and highlighted content. And all will re-flow and present beautifully within the SharePoint mobile apps.

The SharePoint mobile apps will display hub sites, and their pages, news, and content, with smooth navigation between associated sites and the scoped search experience. Find what you need on the go and get going! Install or update the SharePoint mobile app today: aka.ms/getSPmobile.

WEBINAR ON-DEMAND | “Intranet strategy and planning with SharePoint hub sites & Office 365” – In this insightful LIVE Show, Andy Talbot joined Mark Kashman (senior product manager from the SharePoint team), Sue Hanley (SharePoint Consultant (MVP)) and Sam Marshall (ClearBox Consulting – owner) for the launch and strategic overview of SharePoint hub sites. The first segment of the webinar provides a detailed view into the core scenarios and capabilities of SharePoint hub sites, plus demo the user and admin experiences when working in and with hub sites. The second segment is devoted to a real-world discussion to uncover best practices, insights, and gotchas for decision makers & intranet-owners as you prepare to transform where you are and where you want to be! See a ton and take a bunch of notes to accelerate your digital workplace of now.

BIG EVENT | SharePoint Conference North America (#SPC18) - This is a premier opportunity to hear experts from Microsoft and around the world share their experience and knowledge. We will share best practices and future enhancements across the whole of SharePoint and related technologies – including what’s coming next for hub sites.

SharePoint hub sites are designed to extend the reach of your information and to bolster the connective tissue each organization brings across the company. We are on this intranet journey through Web’space and time together. And we’re just getting started. (set your phasers to “fun”)

Q: When can I expect to be able to create SharePoint hub sites in my Office 365 environment?

UPDATED[5.7.2018]| A: SharePoint hub sites have now been rolled out to 100% worldwide in Office 365, including enterprise, education and government customers. Also, the SharePoint mobile apps have been updated in the production versions to fully support them.

Q: Can I associate one SharePoint hub site to another hub site?

A: No, you won't be able to associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub site.

Q: Can a team site or a communication site be associated to more than one SharePoint hub site?

A: No. It will only be possible to associate a site to one hub site at a time. It is possible to link to various non-associated sites in the top navigation. And it will be possible, within seconds, to associate and/or disassociate a site as the business changes.

Q: Can a hub site replace my current organizational portal?

A: Hub sites are designed to let you dynamically organize closely related sites, bringing together similar projects, and binding related assets, and presenting common activity. Customers with portals that include customization beyond the web parts and extensions that SharePoint Framework currently supports are likely to continue using the SharePoint publishing infrastructure, which continues to be fully supported both in SharePoint Server on-premises and SharePoint Online.

Q: When should I use a team site, and when should I use a communication site?

A: Your SharePoint team site lets you share content, knowledge, news and apps with your group as collaborate on a project. A communication site lets you tell your story, share your work, and showcase your product across the organization.

P.S.

Extra credit for making it this far: a screenshot showing what a SharePoint team site when associated to a HR hub site:

P.S.S.

Thanks for finding out what all the hub hub hub site hubbub is all about! :)

P.S.S.S.

[Small update: we have our winner. Congrats, Pavan! And thanks all for playing]

First person to tweet the exact sentence below in quotes to me (@mkashman) and @SharePoint gets a free SWAG combo kit – a SharePoint Monkey, a Microsoft Graph hat, a Microsoft pen and a pair of SharePoint socks. GO!

“My heart beats a mighty lub’dub over all the hubbub and the Hubba hub hub of #SharePoint hub sites! @mkashman @SharePoint”

Awesome to see this come through today! I have been watching like a hawk for the release. I ran the command against two sites a few hours back and have yet to see any changes. I tried against the root site collection and a modern communication site collection. They both show up as registered hub sites with get-spohubsite and we are set to targeted release as an organization.

Any ideas why the hub site nav and hub site settings features would be absent from both of these site collections?

@Chris Carruthers I asked a similar question which @Mark Kashman kindly answered on Twitter. It seems that although the PowerShell commands run in seconds, the service update which delivers the navigation and site settings is running behind. So we are in a short term interim period where not everything is showing up. This should resolve hopefully soon. Best wishes.

Is it possible that creating hub sites works fine but associating communication sites does not work: Neither does the link show up in the communication site information menu, nor does the PowerShell command work right now (Germany, targeted release tenants).

Hello. Thanks for this great news. I am wondering: "Does an old style team site inherit of the modern hub site style once associated to a hub sites?" If so, it opens the gate to some very nice projects. I'll be waiting for an answer to move forward on that topic. Looking forward to getting an answer. Cheers! Christophe

I've run the Powershell (you know how I feel about that @Melissa Torres!) and I have a new Hub Site. I've associated one other "modern" site with it.

After I set a new theme on the Hub Site, is there a lag before I see it on the associated site(s)?

I have two different browser tabs open to the Hub Site. I manually added a link to the associated site in one tab, but don't see it in the other, even after a Ctrl-F5. My guess is something is cached that shouldn't be.

I published a News item in the associated site, but don't see it in the Hub Site. What's the delay supposed to be there? Are all News items rolled up?

@Marc Anderson Thanks for being an early adopter! I hear you on the use of PowerShell. On your questions:

1. Yes it's not automatic, can take up to 2 hours. 2. Correct it is due to caching. We're working on addressing this issue of switching between tabs. 3. We use search to rollup content from the associated sites so it's subject to that, and yes all news items rollup.

I'm jealous of everyone who have had it hit their tenant. Still waiting for it to hit mine.

One more thing I haven't read about yet was the support of converting a root site collection to a hub site. If it is supported (command went through so it looks like it might be) are there any limitations? Will I get the ability to have full width pages?

Great to see Hub sites functionality coming to SharePoint. Also ran the PowerShell commands for a couple of sites in my Targeted Release Office 365 tenant and still waiting till it shows up in the UI.

Requesting a quicker way of knowing whether a feature is available per tenant: Don't try and error whether a feature is available, simply check whether your SharePoint Online is running at the minimal version level

Instead of checking whether a specific version is available and working per tenant, it would be easier for me to simply check whether my tenant is at the right "patch" level. Is that possible, e.g. by a list of features per SharePoint Online version and being able to compare it with your SharePoint Online version?

So, is it possible that Microsoft in the future will provide information regarding the version number of your SharePoint Online tenant and a list of features that have been rolled out per version? E.g. is there a list which version has features like the Hub Sites and the ability as an admin (or regular user) to view the version of the SharePoint UI you are using, for example having it listed in the Modern SharePoint Admin Center?

Our Hub sites fully activated today, and they are quite awesome. We've already converted a multi-regional news service into a Hub with a collection of Comm Sites. They dont address the full enterprise navigation "problems", but they help a little bit.

The next things we need - ability to associate sites to multiple hubs (e.g. Europe News) can rollup to the Global News Hub AND the Europe Operating Company Hub. This request is coming super fast after we've shown the capability

As business goals and team structures evolve, so too must your sites and the content that lives within them. Ideas must flourish and grow, not become rigid or stale. SharePoint hub sites bring flexible, dynamic building blocks to your company intranet – connecting collaboration and communication. Associating sites together in a hub site enhances discovery and engagement with content, while creating a complete and consistent representation of your project, department or region.

Microsoft first disclosed SharePoint hub sites during Ignite 2017. And today, we are pleased to announce that they are now rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365. We are encouraged by early adopter feedback and can’t wait for every customer to use and adopt them.

SharePoint hub sites bring the following new capabilities to you and your intranet:

The Contoso Travel HR communication shown here as a part of the HR hub site, Web view on the left, within the SharePoint mobile app on the right.

Hub sites support good governance, giving admins a growth framework to maintain relationships between sites over time. They are easy for admins to establish and bring efficiencies for people who work inside and across the sites on a day-to-day basis. And when managing change within the business, it is easy to move a site from one hub site to another.

Getting started with SharePoint hub sites in Office 365

You can convert an existing communication site or modern team time into a hub site, or you can start with a brand-new modern site. We recommend selecting a communication site as the hub site. You can associate multiple team sites and communication sites to model and promote an intranet that reflects the way your people organize. It is easy for admins to create one or more hub sites. After a hub site is created, approved site owners can associate existing team sites and communication sites with the hub site.

Admins, you are the enablers. And the SharePoint Online Management Shell (aka, PowerShell for SharePoint in Office 365) is your enabling tool of choice.

The PowerShell cmdlet you’ll want to get most familiar with is: Register-SPOHubSite https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/HR (where HR URL is the full-path address of the existing site that you want to convert into a hub site). You then will assign a unique security group to designate approved site owners that can associate sites to this new hub. You simply create a mail-enabled security group and add the users. You then run an additional PowerShell command to give that group permissions to associate their sites to the hub site.

Note: You must be a SharePoint administrator or above in Office 365 to create SharePoint hub sites. Site owners, however, can associate a SharePoint site with a hub site that already exists.

Once a hub site is established, it’s then a two-click process to associate to the hub site.

As the site owner, go to the site you want to have associated to the hub site. Click Settings (gear icon) > Site information > hub site association and select the desired hub. You’ll only see the hubs you have permission to associate to. And then click Save. You will see the hub navigation appear above. The site itself will inherit the hub theme, and news and activities will begin to flow up to the hub site home page – along with a search crawl of content for any site associated to the hub site. And at any time, per a reorg or change in business direction, you can easily move sites between hub sites. This is the power of a dynamic intranet, one that can change and adapt with the ebb and flow of your ever-changing business landscape. Note: individual sites can only be associated to one hub site at a time.

Site owners can associate an existing team site or communication site with a hub site.

Note: Sites associated with a SharePoint hub site don't inherit the permissions of the hub site or any other sites associated with it. Each site, including the hub site, will retain their current permission settings. And as easy as it is to associate a site to a hub site, you, too, can dissaciate from one.

Once the hub site has been established, you’ll then want to further set it up and refine it for that organization -- so the hub site carries the right name and logo, the preferred navigation elements, a preferred theme, and the desired layout for news, sites and highlighted content. And all will re-flow and present beautifully within the SharePoint mobile apps.

The SharePoint mobile apps will display hub sites, and their pages, news, and content, with smooth navigation between associated sites and the scoped search experience. Find what you need on the go and get going! Install or update the SharePoint mobile app today: aka.ms/getSPmobile.

WEBINAR | “Intranet strategy and planning with SharePoint hub sites & Office 365” – In this insightful LIVE Show, Andy Talbot will be joined by Mark Kashman (senior product manager from the SharePoint team), Sue Hanley (SharePoint Consultant (MVP)) and Sam Marshall (ClearBox Consulting – owner) for the launch and strategic overview of SharePoint hub sites. The first segment of the webinar will provide a detailed view into the core scenarios and capabilities of SharePoint hub sites, plus demo the user and admin experiences when working in and with hub sites. The second segment will be devoted to a real-world discussion to uncover best practices, insights, and gotchas for decision makers & intranet-owners as you prepare to transform where you are and where you want to be! Get ready to see a ton and take a bunch of notes to accelerate your digital workplace of now.

BIG EVENT | SharePoint Conference North America (#SPC18) - This is a premier opportunity to hear experts from Microsoft and around the world share their experience and knowledge. We will share best practices and future enhancements across the whole of SharePoint and related technologies – including what’s coming next for hub sites.

SharePoint hub sites are designed to extend the reach of your information and to bolster the connective tissue each organization brings across the company. We are on this intranet journey through Web’space and time together. And we’re just getting started. (set your phasers to “fun”)

Q: When can I expect to be able to create SharePoint hub sites in my Office 365 environment?

A: SharePoint hub sites will begin to roll out to Targeted Release customers starting late March 2018 and will be completed within 1 month. We are then targeting early May 2018 for complete worldwide rollout. You can track release progress on the public Office 365 Roadmap; note this link is filtered on “SharePoint” items.Note: Anyone in Targeted Release (TR) can run the new hub sites PowerShell command (Register-SPOHubSite) -- and it does what it needs to do, and will retain the command on that site -- yet, if your tenant has not received the additional service-side update we are rolling out, then you won't see the new capabilities show up on the existing site you are working to convert to a hub site. We start at 10% of TR, and will quickly move to 100% TR within ~ one week.

Q: Can I associate one SharePoint hub site to another hub site?

A: No, you won't be able to associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub site.

Q: Can a team site or a communication site be associated to more than one SharePoint hub site?

A: No. It will only be possible to associate a site to one hub site at a time. It is possible to link to various non-associated sites in the top navigation. And it will be possible, within seconds, to associate and/or disassociate a site as the business changes.

Q: Can a hub site replace my current organizational portal?

A: Hub sites are designed to let you dynamically organize closely related sites, bringing together similar projects, and binding related assets, and presenting common activity. Customers with portals that include customization beyond the web parts and extensions that SharePoint Framework currently supports are likely to continue using the SharePoint publishing infrastructure, which continues to be fully supported both in SharePoint Server on-premises and SharePoint Online.

Q: When should I use a team site, and when should I use a communication site?

A: Your SharePoint team site lets you share content, knowledge, news and apps with your group as collaborate on a project. A communication site lets you tell your story, share your work, and showcase your product across the organization.

P.S.

Extra credit for making it this far: a screenshot showing what a SharePoint team site when associated to a HR hub site:

P.S.S.

Thanks for finding out what all the hub hub hub site hubbub is all about! :)

P.S.S.S.

[Small update: we have our winner. Congrats, Pavan! And thanks all for playing]

@First person to tweet the exact sentence below in quotes to me (@mkashman) and @SharePoint gets a free SWAG combo kit – a SharePoint Monkey, a Microsoft Graph hat, a Microsoft pen and a pair of SharePoint socks. GO!

@“My heart beats a mighty lub’dub over all the hubbub and the Hubba hub hub of #SharePoint hub sites! @mkashman @SharePoint”

Yet another somewhat pointless layer on top of what is already a confusing mess. Why don't you guys focus on fixing the countless bugs and deficiencies in what's already being used and IMPROVING the product, instead of continually throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks?

@Mark Kashman@Melissa Torres Several of us have noticed when we narrow our browsers, the Hub Site nav disappears. It doesn't seem to land in the waffle, the hamburger, the ellipses, or anywhere. What's the intended behavior?

Finally it's fine to see the Hub Sites at work, but I have some questions:

cache: it takes really a long time to see changes to themes or to reorganization of content

SharePoint home page: is there a way to recognize hub sites from others?

global hub site navigations. It will be nice a behaviuor like the one we have with Publishing sites, with the possibility to automatically add (and hide and reorganize) connected sites and security trimming